


Edge of the Abyss

by Solange956



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Bonding with Teenagers as you casually escape from a government lab facility, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Booker | Sebastien le Livre-centric, Casual theft and car jacking, Crossover, Dad!vibe Booker, Exiled Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Gen, Light Angst, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26954848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solange956/pseuds/Solange956
Summary: Booker travels to New Orleans after encountering Quynh, hoping to live out the rest of his exile in peace. Unfortunately, someone has other plans for him.Waking up in a cell, Booker sees a girl walk through the cell wall and wonders if perhaps the alcohol is causing hallucinations or if he's being haunted by actual ghosts now instead of just his metaphorical ones.Inspired by a kink meme prompthere.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 100





	Edge of the Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> Xmen Notes: I’m not following any one version too closely. I used to read a lot of Xmen fic back in the day, and I’m following ye olde tradition of mashing universes up into whatever’s convenient. No need to be too familiar with the movie or cartoons or the comics. Mine is going to be a mix of all three, and I’ll do my best to clarify things as the story moves along. Might include story notes just to explain what’s going on there, but I guess let me know if you need more exposition or something. 
> 
> Old Guard Notes: If you’re not a fan of Booker (or at least neutral), this might not be your cup of tea. I love the other members of the Old Guard, and I think they had every right to hand out punishment to Booker for his actions. That being said, I have a lot of sympathy for Booker (as a person who has loved ones that died of cancer) and I feel like the man really deserves serious therapy, AA meetings, and to find a hobby/new purpose in life (esp. if they expect him to return after 100 years and not have the exact same problems that led to his shitty decision-making). Though I wouldn't expect the others to be responsible for that considering the circumstances.
> 
> This story was born from thinking about who would be able to help Booker get some therapy while also reasonably being informed about his immortality. And my answer to that was the Xmen, lol.
> 
> If you don't like the premise of this story, please don't read. 
> 
> Otherwise, please enjoy!

A simple fact: Booker had never wanted to be a soldier. He had been a forger, a husband, a father, a bank teller, a fisherman, an artist, but he’d never wanted to fight for something greater. When he’d died for the first time and then awoken, he’d hoped it was his second chance. An opportunity to go back to his wife and children and make a better life for himself. Instead, he died over and over again until the other immortals had found him in the Russian wilderness and told him he couldn’t return home.

He’d scoffed at them, called them many foul names for telling him to abandon his family, but they only gazed at him with sympathy in their eyes. When they’d all arrived in France, they gave him an address in case of emergencies and left him to travel alone back to Marseille.

If Booker had to guess, that was his first mistake. And the first of very, very many over the next few decades. After the death of his youngest son and last living family member, all he had was an address in Paris and a new family whose sole purpose seemed to be fighting one righteous war after another. Very aware of his new status in their small group and trapped on a ship sailing across the Atlantic to fight against slavery, Booker could not figure out how to tell them that he did not want to kill people. He wasn’t a warrior and had never considered himself one. But he could make them passports with new identities to get them to the new world. He knew how to secure funds and how to create new backgrounds, and Booker thought that maybe he could ignore the rest of his anxieties if he could make himself useful enough. 

Either way, he never managed to tell them his misgivings and then the American Civil War was over. They all went their separate ways, and he was left to drink himself to death in a small apartment in New York. They met up again a year or so later, and again he could not tell them, and again they separated.

His misery, he was sure, they noticed. They were warm, understanding, always ready with a drink or a meal to comfort him on his worst days. But still, no one asked him. Perhaps it was because they assumed it was grief for his family and that he would speak of them eventually. Or perhaps they thought it was his occasional dream of drowning off the coast of England, and they could not take the pain, the reminder of their own grief.

One of the first lessons Booker was taught: they were immortal, but they were not infallible. And that some things were worse than death.

Eventually his despair led him down a path from which he could not return and for the first time since the death of his youngest son, he was completely alone, adrift in the world. But now there was nowhere to go, no purpose or calling waiting for him.

He went to Paris first because in his distress, he was still young enough to crave the familiarity of his home country, even as changed as it was since he’d been a mortal man. It might not have been the best decision, falling into a haze of alcohol and despair, but he’d been a functioning alcoholic much longer than it’d been a concept and he was able to keep himself and his home relatively clean and tidy.

And, for the first time since he’d been arrested and sent to Russia, he could think about what he wanted to do with his life besides war or crime. As that small bubble of hope grew in him, it was quickly punctured. Quynh had arrived in his life.

Drowning was a death he had dreamed of all his immortal life, but he had never experienced it until he’d spent a week on a yacht with the sister he had never known. He wasn’t sure if she was even interested in knowing where to find the others. After the first day, she’d stopped asking, still sharp enough to tell that he honestly had no idea. When she’d continued dropping him over the edge of the ship, bringing him up long enough to watch him writhe and choke on a bellyful of seawater and air, it felt like she was waiting for something. Or perhaps Booker was a stand in for the family that had abandoned her, accepting her wrath in their place. Or maybe it was his punishment for betraying said family.

Regardless, he drowned and drowned and drowned, seemingly with no end and he had no idea how Quynh had stayed relatively sane after 500 years. The fact that she was standing upright and capable of speech was more than he would have been capable of after a few weeks of this torment, let alone the half millennia she had endured.

Luckily for him, Copley had noticed something amiss when there’d been no movement in or out of his apartment for a week and had notified the team. Booker suspected they might not have bothered if Dr. Meta Kozak hadn’t disappeared the day after the lab breakout. He certainly didn’t think they expected to find Quynh waiting for them on a yacht in the Mediterranean, comfortably lounging on deck in a bathing suit.

He could only imagine how the reunion had gone, Quynh’s unnervingly calm demeanor doing little to hide the rage constantly burning in her eyes. It was Nile who’d noticed the thick chain hanging over the edge of the boat and asked where Booker was in a panic.

Everything after he’d been pulled from the water was a blur. Color, noise and his own wracking coughs and convulsions blurring the memories into something he could hardly rely on. He couldn’t remember being picked up and transported to Copley or his recovery afterward. Some things, he’d learned over the last two centuries, are beyond one’s immortal ability to heal physical wounds.

By the time he’d opened his eyes and felt coherent for the first time in over a month, it was only Copley and Nile waiting for him. The rest had left to deal with Quynh, whatever that entailed, and Booker could only hope that, for Andy’s sake, they were able to help her.

“They’ll be back soon,” Nile said to him after telling him the events leading up to his and Quynh’s discovery. “I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you’re okay.”

Booker looked down, then glanced over to Copley’s carefully blank face. The three of them were sitting at the man’s kitchen table, a warm mug of strong tea (no additives) warming Booker’s hands, Booker in a t-shirt and a pair of borrowed sweats. Booker cleared his throat.

“Nile, I should leave before anyone comes back,” Booker said softly, looking to the bright young woman he’d barely had a chance to know.

“But- “ Nile began. “Look, I know you’re in exile, I get it, but you should have seen them when we figured out that you’d been taken. They’re going to want to see you.”

“I doubt it,” Booker said with a shrug. “It’s too soon. I don’t want to… I don’t want to put them in a difficult position. Make them feel pressured to lessen my sentence because of what happened.”

“…Do you not want to come back?” Nile asked, and Booker felt like he could learn to love her from the way concern shone in her eyes.

Booker laughed and took a sip of his tea before he continued.

“I want to more than anything, but I realize now that separating… it’s for the best,” Booker told her. “They need time without me, and I need to time to figure myself out… alone, I guess.”

Nile stared at him for a few moments, her face a blank and nearly unreadable, until she looked away and nodded slowly.

“I don’t agree with you,” Nile said slowly. “About not waiting to see them first, but I understand. Just, check in more? With Copley at least.”

“Thank you, Nile,” Booker said, “And I’ll try.”

“We could do once a month?” Copley suggested now that the heaviest part of the conversation was over.

“Sure,” Booker nodded. “I think I’ll leave Europe. Seems like my best bet at staying out of…things.”

“And take care of yourself,” Nile said sternly. “Get a hobby or something. Saw your apartment and it was depressing, Book.”

Booker chuckled, almost choking on another mouthful of tea.

“I’ll try.”

He’d traveled to New Orleans soon after. He moved into an apartment in St. Claude, just north of the French Quarter and all the tourist attractions. Booker made it a point to get out and tour the city like any normal human being would. The architecture of the historical districts was just familiar enough to make him nostalgic, but new enough to make them interesting. The city was lively and warm in a way he hadn’t experienced in some time, and he tried his best to stay sober… well, for the most part. There were no ghosts waiting for him in this city, despite its reputation, and Booker hadn’t realized what a relief that would be.

That’s why it was unexpected when he woke up in a cold cell the night after he’d left a bar, for once only slightly inebriated.

He woke with a loud groan, laying on his side and his face plastered against the hard, metallic surface of the floor beneath him. He wondered if he’d passed out in the men’s bathroom since he clearly wasn’t in his apartment. He fought to pick up his head, the weight of it almost unbearable as he opened bleary eyes to investigate his surroundings.

It… didn’t look like the bar he’d visited the night before. It didn’t look like any bar he’d been in. Unless solid metal box was the new style for those flashy modern places. And, if Booker wasn’t hallucinating, most places didn’t have bars on the window of a handle-less door.

So, not a bar.

And not an apartment. Not a jail cell either, if he were to guess. Booker picked himself up, sitting on the floor and rubbing aching eyes in the palms of his hands. He was in a sheer metal box with nothing else around him but a camera in the ceiling corner by the door. It was too expensive of a container to belong to local authorities, and Booker tried not to think about who had the resources and motivation to hold him here.

He shuffled back to lean against the wall, the cold seeping into his light cotton button-down shirt. He shivered, rubbing his arms as he looked around the bare room, trying to see if there was a way out of the small room.

He strained his memory, trying to figure out a timeline of events. He’d left the bar on Burgundy St, still lively but off the beaten path, and he’d been relatively sober. Certainly not drunk enough to warrant the pain still pounding behind his eyes. It must have been recent, might even still be nighttime, if whoever had grabbed him was in the city and they hadn’t drugged him more than once.

Booker sighed, head knocking back into the wall behind him as he brought his thumbnail to his lips and chewed thoughtfully.

He hoped it wasn’t Kozak. He was still two weeks away from his next check in with Copley and it was more than enough time to secret him away with no none the wiser.

He sat there, stewing in his own anxiety as his mind cleared, when a girl walked through the wall next to him. They stared at each other, her wide brown eyes staring down at him as he looked back in wonder.

All Booker could think was, _a ghost?_

She retreated, pedaling back through the wall, and he stood up, a careful distance between himself and the spot she’d appeared from. He wondered why the ghost of a petite teenage girl in jeans and a pink cardigan was haunting him in his cell.

He had little time to think more on it before she’d reappeared with another young woman and a short, skinny boy with shoulder-length dark hair. The new girl had an unusual look, a white streak framed her face and the rest of her dark hair pulled back; she was dressed in all black, looking like one of the trendy goths Booker would occasionally see in western cities. The boy was shorter than her, though taller than the first girl, and in contrast was wearing a generic t-shirt, jeans and a worn pair of sneakers.

“Um, I know it’s not Remy, but I thought, hey, maybe he could help us out?” the first girl said nervously, rubbing her arms as she glanced between her two companions.

The taller girl looked impatient, but she gazed upon Booker with both suspicion and sympathy. The boy looked to the first girl and then to Booker, not saying a word as he awkwardly hunched his shoulders.

“So, you’re not a ghost,” Booker said, staring at the three of them in turn, eyes wide and face pale.

The girl with the white streak in her hair scoffed, giving Booker a pointed look before saying in a southern American accent, “I think we should be asking you that.”

Booker looked down and noticed for the first time the holes and bloody streaks riddling his shirt.

“Ah, well,” Booker said with a shrug. “Perhaps you can tell me where we are? I’ve only just woken up.”

The three of them shared a glance between them before the first girl sighed and gave Booker a weak smile.

“You’re in New Orleans in a government holding facility. One we think is meant to hold mutants, sooo…” she shrugged. “We’re looking for a friend who’s being held here. Um, we thought he might be in your, uh, cell. I thought, since _you_ were here, obviously against your will and all, that you might want to- um, help us?”

She said this all very quickly, stringing all the words together in a way that had Booker blinking stupidly at her for a moment as he tried to parse out her meaning. On the one hand, he had no idea what she meant by ‘mutants’. On the other, he perfectly understood ‘government facility’ and upgraded the seriousness of his situation up by several notches.

“ _Merde_ ,” he swore softly as he looked away from them, rubbing the back of his neck.

The shortest girl, perhaps the youngest though Booker couldn’t tell for sure, giggled at that. The other girl poked her in the ribs before raising a questioning brow in Booker’s direction.

“So? We’re on a time crunch here, sugar,” she said, not unkindly, but Booker could sense more urgency in her than in the others.

“Let’s go,” Booker said with a sigh. “I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”

“Great!” the first girl said, grinning brightly as she reached forward and grabbed his arm. “I’m Kitty by the way.”

Booker tried not to flinch away, the solid grip on his arm proving that he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating his new companions. The other two grabbed onto Kitty’s shoulders and then they simply…walked through the wall.

Booker let out the breath he’d been holding as they passed through solid metal, not even a tingle to tell him they had traveled through it. He glanced around; the cold metal hallway they were in told him nothing of their location still. Only the occasional door broke up the monotony of it all.

“Booker,” he introduced himself, a little breathless.

“I’m Rogue, this is Kurt,” the other girl said, pointing at herself and then at the boy.

“Ah, let’s go find your friend,” Booker said. “Lead the way?”

“We already checked the second level basement,” Kurt said softly, and Booker was startled by the light German accent in the boy’s voice, the first time he’d heard him speak. “If Remy is not here, he must be in the lower levels.”

Booker glanced to Rogue, the one who seemed to be leading the operation, and she nodded, already moving to the end of the hall where an exit sign was located over a set of double doors.

“I’m guessing no one here has a gun they can give me,” Booker commented as Kitty phased them through the doors instead of opening them.

They all turned to look at him, clearly startled by the suggestion, before Rogue shook her head.

“No, we, uh, don’t use guns,” she said, bewildered by his request.

“We’re seventeen, dude,” Kitty said, her brow wrinkled as she gave him a confused glance.

“I’m eighteen, actually,” Kurt coughed, but the two girls ignored him. “And I can just teleport away, so no need for guns really.”

Booker blinked, and suppressed the urge to sigh, “Yeah, okay. If you spot any, let me know.”

“Sure,” Rogue said as she bound down the steps to the next level, the rest of them following quickly after her.

She waited for Kitty to phase them through the next set of doors. Booker thought it was smart of them not to open anything and potentially set off alarms, though Booker stopped her with a light tap to her shoulder from continuing down the hall. Rogue flinched, bi-colored hair whipping around her as she turned to glare at him.

“Let me go first,” Booker said, soft but firm.

He didn’t know what he would do if he let a group of headstrong teenagers get shot instead of him no matter what sort of mystic powers they had.

“What can you do then?” Kitty asked, voice bright with false cheer as she tried to make conversation.

“Do?” Booker asked, in confusion, thinking they couldn’t possibly know about his immortality despite their own…gifts.

“You know, your mutation,” she prodded as they continued walking, Booker in the lead as the three of them followed close behind. “You’re here for a reason, aren’t you?”

Booker sighed, looking down at his shredded shirt and shrugged.

“You don’t have to worry about me getting hurt,” he said dryly as he gestured to the state of his clothes but his undamaged skin and left it at that.

Much to Booker’s consternation, the three seemed to relax when they took in the blood-stained shirt and saw his unbroken, but blood-streaked skin underneath.

“Oh, you have a healing factor!” Kitty said, looking excited and relieved. “Okay, we’re in business now.”

“Ja, Sehr gut,” Kurt agreed, and even Rogue gave Booker a small smile as she stuck to his side, allowing him to shield her as they turned the next corner.

Booker was confused, to put it mildly. He could heal, yes, but… that wasn’t quite the terms of his particular ‘skill set’. He decided not to push it, uncomfortable with the knowledge he’d already given them.

“How do you know where to find your friend?” Booker asked after Kitty had poked her head into a few more potential cells.

Booker had waited awkwardly with Rogue and Kurt, the two teenagers eyeing Booker like wary cats as they waited for Kitty investigate.

“His family has, uh, connections,” Kitty explained. “They got us the location of this place and some rough blueprints, but that’s about it.”

“Do you think we could look for a computer terminal?” Booker asked, hoping they would agree so he could try and find what the facility had on him.

“I dunno if we have the time for that…” Rogue started as they turned another corner, each bland metallic corridor the same as the last.

“That might be a good idea,” Kurt said thoughtfully. “Kitty, you could do it, right?”

“Uh- I mean, probably? I’ve never tried it on actual, like, government computers,” Kitty said nervously.

Booker supposed she must be the computer savvy member of their group, and he smiled. Luckily for them, this was Booker’s realm of expertise.

“Try and find us a computer terminal,” Booker said to Kitty, who was currently jogging along at his elbow. “I can take care of the rest.”

“Okay?” Kitty said, looking at Booker curiously, but she poked her head through every door they came across before finally giving Booker a thumbs up and pulling him through.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can do like, normal hacking but-uh,” Kitty hovered over his shoulder as Booker quickly booted up the nearest computer.

“Honestly, government facilities have worse security than you might think,” Booker said as he lifted the keyboard to find the username and password. “Just remember that they’re on a budget. That includes people and equipment.”

“Huh,” Kitty said, watching as he opened files, trying to find something that would reveal why he was in the facility.

It took a few moments, but he found a file with Kozak’s name and several video files with a set of familiar dates. Booker sighed slowly and closed his eyes, knowing exactly what had led him here. They hadn’t killed Kozak when they’d been in the lab, a mistake that had cost them dearly. No one had been able to track her down after the incident- something Copley had kept him informed on even in his exile.

It seemed that Booker was unlucky enough to be in the same country as her. From the files he was able to scan through, she’d gone to the American government with what little she’d been able to scavenge from Merrick Pharmaceuticals, and they’d decided that he and the team fell under the umbrella of ‘mutant’.

“Wait, click on that,” Kitty said, pointing at another file.

He was glad that a lot of the information and the language was more complex than most teenagers would be able to process. Either that or Kitty was being extremely polite and not asking him about the information he was hunting down. The file he opened was dated only for the day before and when he clicked open the video file, a tall, skinny auburn-haired teenager was struggling on a gurney as an unfamiliar doctor verbally dictated notes.

Booker felt sick as he watched and quickly closed the video when he felt Kitty tremble against his elbow.

“It looks like he’s in the floor under this one,” Booker said, looking at the admittance paperwork.

“Okay,” Kitty said quietly as she grabbed his arm.

“Wait,” Booker said before she could pull him through the door. “Can you reach in and grab the hard drive?”

“Oh,” Kitty said, looking at the computer circuitry sitting next to the monitor. “Good idea.”

Booker watched in amazement as she reached a hand into the guts of the computer and, after a moment of feeling around, pulled out exactly what they needed.

“That’s amazingly useful,” Booker said as Kitty grabbed his arm again and pulled him from the room.

She pushed the hard drive into Kurt’s unsuspecting arms, much to the boy’s confusion.

“Put this in your pocket,” she said. “I forgot to bring my purse. And don’t let anything happen to it!”

Kurt stuffed it into one of the deep pockets he had in the front of his jeans, giving Kitty a salute with a little grin. Booker thought he must be a more jocular sort when not breaking into government facilities.

“Did you find anything about Remy?” Rogue asked, looking tense as she hugged herself.

“He should be right below us,” Booker said, looking to the end of the hall where another staircase awaited them. “Let’s hurry.”

The followed behind him as he used his long legs to his advantage, keeping an eye on all the entry ways and possible points of ambush. There wasn’t much he could do for them without a weapon but take a killing blow, but between Kitty’s extraordinary abilities and Kurt’s supposed teleporting abilities, he hoped it would be enough to allow them to escape if they ran into anyone unexpected.

“Do you normally find yourselves in these situations alone?” Booker couldn’t help but ask as they entered the next stairwell and rushed as quietly down the steps as possible.

The three of them glanced at each other again before entering the next floor.

“We normally have back up,” Rogue said, stiffly.

“More experienced people I hope?” Booker said with a chuckle and shake of his head.

“I mean, yeah,” Kitty said, “We’re with a group of mutants, uh, they’re definitely more experienced than we are but uh-“

“It was an emergency,” Kurt interrupted, glancing the back the way they came nervously. “We didn’t have time.”

Kitty grabbed onto Rogue and Booker, Kurt latching on at the last minute as she pulled them through. Booker suppressed a sigh as he wondered how many worried parents were currently waiting up for their wayward teenagers. Something to address once they’d located the fourth and rescued him, he supposed. Then he could get to work tracking down the elusive Dr. Kozak. Contacting Copley would be the priority once he managed to see his ragtag team home safely.

Booker took point once again as they walked swiftly and quietly down the hall, Kitty directly behind him, Rogue following and Kurt bringing up the rear.

He held up his hand when they reached the next turn, hearing voices that sounded suspiciously loud. He stopped, peeking quickly around the corner to catch sight of a set of open double doors. Several adults in lab coats were crowded around a table in the middle of the dim room, a spotlight shining down onto whatever they were observing. Booker had a bad feeling it was their missing teenager.

Booker fell back, looking behind him to give them a serious nod. The three of them immediately tensed, somehow managing to look more nervous than they had before. Rogue had a determined glint in her eyes that Booker appreciated.

“Can you get look into the other side?” Booker whispered to Kitty, pointing to the wall they were leaning against.

Hopefully, it was an empty room they could use to wait out the team of scientists. Worse come to worse, Booker was pretty sure he didn’t see any armed guards in the room, but he’d rather not stir up a commotion with only his current entourage as back up.

Kitty poked only her head through the solid wall, and came back through just as quickly, giving Booker a quick nod.

“Good,” Booker said, gesturing for her to take them all through.

They found themselves in a dark office, a door with a small window facing the room Booker had seen from the hallway. Rogue rushed to the other side of the room, and nearly pressed her face up against the glass as she stifled a gasp.

Booker sighed as he followed her more sedately, easily looking over her head to get a better look at the situation.

The view of the room was better from this angle and Booker could see the same skinny teenager from the video strapped down to a table. One scientist, a man older than the rest by a few decades, had the boy’s hand strapped to a metal support, the limb held aloft and encased in either glass or plastic as pink sparks flashed around the boy’s fingers.

“Remy,” the girl in front of him whispered in dismay.

Booker felt cold, the tableau before him somehow a thousand times worse than his short stay in Merrick’s lab. Seeing such a young man, a child really, in pain and tortured…Booker felt something hard and merciless inside him swell. He wished he’d felt like this when it had been Andy, Nicky, and Joe strapped down with him, but his mind had been steeped in his century old resentment; looking at the boy in front of him now, surrounded by his friends, it truly dawned on him how he had made victims of his family in the same way.

“Let’s wait until they leave,” Booker said quietly, setting aside the feelings of despair, and tapped her on the arm to draw her away from the window.

Rogue jerked her head up to look at him, her dark green eyes damp but piercing. He tried his best to smile reassuringly, though he suspected it was his usual world-weary expression.

Rogue gave him a watery smile in return, so he supposed it wasn’t a complete loss. Booker silently urged her to step to the side and followed her, hiding the two of them from any eyes that might accidently catch sight of them. Booker looked around the dark office curiously before he began to snoop through the files sitting on the desk.

“What are you doing?” Kurt hissed to him, stepping closer to crane his head to look at the paperwork Booker was shuffling through.

“Looking for anything useful,” Booker whispered back. “Help me find anything with a name you recognize. Someone keep an eye on the other room. Stay out of sight.”

Rogue kept her eyes peeled on the boy, Remy, as Kitty and Kurt shrugged, walking over to help Booker. Kitty didn’t bother with visible files, simply sticking her hands through the desk to pull out paperwork in the locked cabinets. Booker gave her a quick smile before flicking through them. They worked efficiently together and soon they had a large pile of rejects that Kitty began placing back into the desk.

Booker caught sight of his name, his real name even, and Dr. Kozak’s. The rest of the team was there too, blurry photos and profiles staring up at him. Dull yellow sticky notes were plastered to them with questions. The phrase ‘mutation’ was repeated quite often as well as several complex formulas and diagrams that Booker didn’t have the know-how to parse out the meaning of.

Kurt and Kitty pulled several files pertaining to their friend, Booker caught sight of the name ‘Remy,’ ‘Gambit,’ ‘Xavier,’ and ‘Essex.’ He frowned, wondering if they would be willing to speak to Copley. Surely something like this was well above their abilities to manage.

“They’re leavin’ guys,” Rogue whispered urgently, her head whipping around to stare at them and their pile of ill-gotten files pointedly.

Kurt immediately began rolling the nearest files up and shoved them into his pockets and into the waistline of his pants. Booker sighed and did the same, trying as best he could to avoid the blood stains. Rogue grabbed a bag, white with a logo on it, from a hook next to the door and brought it over to the table.

“Seriously, guys?” she said softly, rolling her eyes.

“Oooh, smart thinking,” Kitty whispered brightly.

Booker froze from shoving another file into his pants and turned to look at Kurt. The teen giggled softly before pulling out the files in his pants and putting it into Rogue’s bag. She pulled her arm, covered from the shoulder to the tips of her fingers with form-fitting fabric, from her coat. The thought that she was a strangely modest young woman flickered through Booker’s mind. He admired her quick thinking however as she tucked the bag over her shoulder and quickly jammed her arm back into her coat sleeve, effectively hiding the bright white of the bag under her bulky coat.

“Let’s go,” Booker said, peering out of the little window.

The room was cleared of scientists and only the limp form of the teen still strapped to the table remained. His hands were still encased in the strange clear capsules and his chest was bare, black straps a stark contrast to the sickly pale of his skin. Luckily, it looked like he was still wearing the trousers he came in with.

Kitty phased them through the office door and Booker hung back to keep an eye on the main door. It was closed and all signs of the scientists were gone, but the last thing they needed was to be caught unaware at this point in the rescue.

“Remy,” Rogue said, her voice still quiet but growing frantic.

Booker turned his head back to them, catching sight of Rogue shaking the boy gently and slapping his face. Kitty and Kurt were working on freeing Remy from the straps.

“Come on, swamp rat, we gotta get out of here,” Rogue urged, looking helplessly up and down the boy’s body.

Booker sighed, walking over and throwing Remy over his shoulder. He didn’t moan or twitch and Booker buried the twinge of concern building in his chest.

“But the things on his hands,” Kitty said, pointing to the plastic containers still clamped onto Remy’s wrists.

“We can take care of it later,” Booker said as he adjusted the shirtless teen on his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here fast while we’re still undetected.”

“Okay, hold on then,” Kurt said as he grasped Booker’s arm and held the other out to the girls. Kitty clamped onto Kurt, face pale and tense, as Rogue took Kurt’s hand and then Booker’s.

“This might be a little rough,” Rogue warned him when Booker shot her a confused look. “Hold onto him and close your eyes.”

Booker barely had enough time to follow her instructions before a dark cloud of smoke enveloped them. Heat and the scent of something sweet and faintly rotten hit him in the face, making him gag, but it was over almost as soon as it had begun. When Booker opened his eyes, he was looking at a small, deserted street in humid New Orleans, the nearest streetlamp flickering in the distance.

“I couldn’t take us too far,” Kurt warned him as he pointed to the short, grey concrete building in the distance.

“Let’s move out then,” Booker said, scanning the area around them. “How did you get here?”

“Uh, we walked?” Kitty said tentatively. “I mean, we took the bus, and then walked, and then Kurt teleported us a bit.”

Booker tried not to sigh, before he said, “Do you live around here? Where are we going?”

“Remy has family in the city,” Rogue said. “He was visiting, we came with him to help out. All this- all this just happened in the meantime.”

“The last few days have been a little… intense,” Kurt said, shrugging as he hugged himself, looking more than a little lost.

“I guess… I mean, the LeBeau’s helped us this far,” Kitty said. “I guess we should go back there…”

“ _Non_ ,” a voice groaned from behind Booker and he eyed the body still slumped over him curiously.

“Remy!” all three of them exclaimed as they rushed behind Booker to see to their friend.

“We can’t go there. Henri _,_ he’s already done too much helpin’ you. I can’t-“ Remy continued.

“Alright, we get it,” Rogue snapped. “Your family’s out. We have to get to someone though, Remy.”

“I can try to call Hank,” Kitty said, looking nervous as she pulled out her phone. “I mean, everyone else is kind of off the grid right now…”

“Not here,” Booker said, and he was amused when Remy stiffened up; he supposed the teen hadn’t thought to question whose shoulder he was slung over until he’d spoken. “Let’s get a car, leave the city and figure it out from there.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kitty said, putting her phone away. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“You gotta car?” Rogue asked, eyebrow raised as she walked back around to face Booker.

“Nope,” Booker said, as he walked swiftly toward a silver Prius parked down the street from them.

“Uh,” Kurt said as they all followed him. “Well, we can get in but unless you know how to hot wire-“

“I do,” the kid over Booker’s shoulder said. “Unfortunately, my hands are a little… occupied at the moment.”

Booker snorted and shifted Remy on his shoulder again, trying not to jostle him too much in case he was injured. 

“I can hot wire a car just fine,” he assured them.

Kitty held his arm, allowing him to place Remy in the back seat before he hopped into the front and popped the locks open. The car alarm blared for a moment before Booker quickly grabbed a few wires under the dash and pulled them, silencing the car. The silence around them echoed.

“Hurry up,” Booker told them as he reached back under the dash to pull the covering out from under the steering wheel.

Kurt and Kitty piled into the back; the sickly-looking Remy squeezed in between them. Rogue went around to the passenger side of the car and threw herself in, slamming the car door behind her, and watched with interest as Booker pulled the wires he needed.

“Is there anything sharp in the glove compartment?” Booker asked, trying to figure out which color was which in the dim light.

“I have a nail clipper,” Kitty offered, her arm thrusting between the seats as she held out a pair of cheap pharmacy nail clippers.

Booker laughed at the pink sparkles on the handle and took them.

“ _Merci_ ,” he said, and quickly clipped through the plastic covering on the wires and then scraped the ends as best he could.

He touched them together, sighing in relief as the car’s electricity turned on. He folded the ends together, ignoring the shock to his fingers. He quickly did the same for the starter wires, the others breathing a sigh of relief as the car’s ignition started up. Booker tucked the wires away as best he could before he shifted the car into drive.

“Okay,” Booker sighed as he pulled out onto the road. “I think we’re clear.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> (Yeah, sorry, I know nothing about government facilities or hotwiring cars- creative license at work. 
> 
> Also, I took some French and a year of German in college, but uh- I'm not a native speaker. Let me know if there’s anything too wonky. I’m going to keep accents and whatnot pretty light since those can be kind of obnoxious sometimes.)
> 
> If you want you can say hi to me on tumblr @ [sholeh675](https://sholeh675.tumblr.com).
> 
> I appreciate any kudos, lovely comments or anyone who just enjoyed the story. You're the best.


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